Neil Gaiman Sandman

Calling all combiners...

I was looking at Neil Gaiman's author page earlier and I'm relatively sure it's a bit of a mess. I don't know much about his Sandman series so I don't feel qualified to clean that up, but I'm sure someone around here does. (Who knows, maybe I'm wrong and it's fine as is, but it doesn't seem like it.) I was also trying to clean up Stardust and make sure the graphic novel wasn't mixed in with the novel but I don't think I succeeded.

For anyone combining Sandman: it will likely always be a mess because they were issued individually, in small collections, and in larger collections. Volume numbers, even if listed, are not reliable for this series.

Unless there has been an actual comic-book adaption, Stardust (not touchstoned, because it won't come up correctly) was never a "graphic novel". It is a heavily illustrated novel, simular to Sandman: The Dream Hunters but not a comic book. The "novel" version is the same book sans the illustrations.

randoymwords: what are your definitions of "graphic novel" vs "heavily illustrated novel" then?

I definitely consider Stardust a graphic novel, myself, with a text version too.

randoymwords:

This has been discussed before. You are wrong.

Leaving aside the line between "heavily illustrated novel" and "graphic novel" as a murky question of definition that sheds no light on the issue, the text contained in the two versions of Stardust is not the same. The original, illustrated version has basically no visual description, since it's hardly necessary. The text-only adaptation has a substantial amount of added text, primarily (maybe entirely -- I only own the original and couldn't tell you) filling in the visual description that became necessary when the pictures were removed.

(I note in passing, as I did last time this came up, that Gaiman lists the two separately on his website -- the no-pictures version under "Books", and the pictures version under "Comics" -- rather than as different editions of the same work.)

And someone with more zeal than sense has combined the two again. Help, please?

Stardust (3844 copies)
Stardust : being a romance within the realms of faerie by Neil Gaiman (489 copies)

Better now. Not great, but better given the info we have...

I've done what I can (thanks for your help infiniteletters!) There are some that can't be disentangled -- individual books where the user-added covers include both those corresponding to the graphic novel and to the prose novel -- but it's better than it was.

For reference for next time this happens (or for anyone wanting to put orphan copies with the right work):

Anything mentioning Charles Vess is the graphic novel.

Anything with the subtitle "Being a romance within the realms of Faerie", likewise.

The four-volume set is the graphic version (a few people have entered it as "four volume set), in addition to those who entered it as four separate volumes.

I left all the translations with the prose version, because I don't know which they correspond to.

That's interesting. When I was still at a bookstore, there was a cheapy Avon version that didn't have any pictures but didn't seem to have any text added.
I wondered why anyone would buy the unillustrated one apart from the cheap factor.
I don't think of Stardust as a graphic novel (which is really a book publishing term, anyway) because while the pictures complement the text, they aren't necessary. I can read the book fine while ignoring the pictures. That's just me. I keep 'em all on the same shelf anyway.
Now, would you consider a text-only copy of Alice in Wonderland to be a separate work from an illustrated version? (Someone keeps combining the Kyle Baker 'comic-book' adaption of Alice through the Looking-Glass with the original book).

Lorax: Don't be so tense. You made me jump, there. I missed the original conversation.

Going back to Tim's original idea of combining things to discuss at an imaginary cocktail party (i.e. the translations of Ulysses), is the extra text an equivalent of the pictures? Would I be talking about the same book? From an aesthetic standpoint, I suspect the answer is no, myself...more like a movie adaption perhaps.

hurm. Someone likes to combine akira the books with the DVD. There's a fine mess...